SO FAR SO CLOSE. IN SEARCH OF BERING ISLAND | 2023
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My project is an attempt to find an answer to the question of whether you can consider the territory you don’t remember as your homeland. It is based on archival black-and-white photographs taken by my father between 1967 and 1970, when he served as chief of the border outpost on Bering Island. 18 rolled-up films stored on a far shelf in his closet.
The past is said to be something that can be mentally seen but cannot be touched. But what if you tried? One day I picked up a Soviet camera just like the one my father used to shoot with, loaded it with color film, and set out to find my island around me, hoping to recapture a personal memory of the time of my birth. After all, I was only one year old when our family left Bering Island. By inscribing the past into the present, I sought to merge two different times and two different spaces, and thus regain a sense of homeland.
The project was initially realized in 2023 in the form of a photobook, published by myself in a limited edition. In 2024, the Museum of the History of Photography in St. Petersburg hosted my solo exhibition dedicated to this project.